


Tick Tock

by erebones



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Blind Date, Blow Jobs, M/M, Museums, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 05:05:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6739231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It reminds me of—well, never mind,” he says, cutting himself off at the pass. Felix stirs, turning to look at him.</p><p>“It reminds you of what? Tell me.”</p><p>“It reminds me of a line from one of my poems. I was writing about Feynriel, actually, about something he said once that just sort of stuck with me. My heart is not a clock.”</p><p>Felix smiles, charmed and bemused. “Explain it to me?”</p><p>“It’s like… well, it’s like love, or anything we’re passionate about. Anything we need to thrive, not just survive. Love isn’t something we can wind up and set, or control. Love is… like art,” he says, latching onto the metaphor with his heart in his throat and the weight of Felix’s regard warming his face. “A force that comes into our lives without rules, without limits or expectations. And every time I hear that line I am reminded that love, like art, must always be free.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tick Tock

**Author's Note:**

> this is just a few prompts and an extra bit of fluff compiled in one place <3 inspired by the relationship between Hernando and Lito in Sense8 (since Hernando has always been my Felix)

Carver is hip-deep in edits for his latest batch of poetry when the chair across the table scrapes back and a stranger sits down, flushed and breathless, with a bright red scarf around his neck and apologies already falling from his lips in a jumble.

“I’m so sorry I’m late, I hope you weren’t waiting long. I’m Felix, by the way, but you probably already knew that. I was caught up at a shop because I said I’d wear a red scarf but I couldn’t find it for the life of me this morning. And I’m so sorry, I’ve forgotten your name. Dorian told me but I have the worst memory, if I don’t write it down it’s gone a minute later.” He finally stops to take a breath, bright-eyed behind round tortoiseshell glasses and a little pink with nervousness and the chill. “Anyway, how are you?”

Carver’s brain is a bit slow on the uptake sometimes, especially when he’s absorbed in his work, but for once he has a pretty clear picture of what’s going on. This Felix person thinks he’s someone else—someone he was supposed to meet without knowing precisely what he looked like. And he’s nervous, though he hides it well, evidenced in the way he nibbles his lower lip and clasps his fingers together, laced tightly on the edge of the glass table. It’s a bit chilly out this late in the summer, right on the cusp of autumn, and Carver opens his mouth and the words fall out, just as if he was a character in one of his stories.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it. Did you want to move inside? I know it’s a little cold out. And I’m Carver, by the way.”

“Oh no, this is all right. Nice to meet you. Um.” He looks at Carver’s tattered journal, all ruffled with its layers of red scribbles and post-it notes in a token attempt at organization. “Doing a little light reading?”

“Sort of. My manuscript. Just keeping busy.” He quickly shuffles it into some sort of order and tucks it back into his briefcase. “Did you want to get coffee?” Thank goodness the waitress had just come by for his own empty cup, or he would have had even more explaining to do.

“Sure. Manuscript?” he asks in the same breath, rising to follow him into the coffee shop. “Are you a writer then?”

“Sort of. I’ve written a few books, but I’ve been more interested in poetry lately. It’s more… raw. Expressive.” He clears his throat and risks a question as they wait in line, the floor under his feet feeling just a little bit off-kilter. He’s going to be in so much trouble when this Felix bloke finds out the truth, but he’s in too deep to back out now. “What do you do?”

“Oh, did Dorian not tell you? Typical. I’m a professor of higher mathematics at Minrathous University. I’m on sabbatical right now, though, which is why he’s decided it’s the perfect time to set me up with someone.” He laughs, nervous and self-deprecating, and Carver feels himself melt. _Dammit._

“Been a while then?” Carver asks easily. “I’m only just back on the market myself. It’s not as easy as I remember it.”

“It really isn’t! Seems like everything is easier when you’re younger. Or maybe we were just more stupid.”

“Ignorance is bliss,” he agrees, and steps up to the counter. “Do you know what you’d like?”

“Oh, Maker, I haven’t even been reading the menu. You go ahead.” He’s already fumbling in his jacket for his wallet, but Carver puts a hand on his arm.

“I’ve got it. Take your time.”

Lace is still behind the counter from when she took his order half an hour ago, and her eyes are nearly popping out of her skull to see this fascinating interaction. Carver gives her a _look_ , and she puts on her most expressionless smile, acting like a stranger instead of his twin sister’s girlfriend. “Hello, welcome to the Hightown Café. What can I get you?”

“I’ll have a tea, please. Cinnamon rooibos latte with a shot of caramel.”

“Coming right up.” She pokes the order into her computer slowly, one eye on Felix’s deliberation. “Do you know what you’d like, sir?”

“Erm. I’ve never been here before, actually, so I’m a bit lost.” He turns to Carver with that blinding smile. “The tea sounds quite good, do you recommend it?”

“It’s delicious. You could try some of mine, if you like.”

“I’ll trust your judgement.”

Lace clears her throat, looking between them, and Carver forces himself to tear his eyes away from Felix’s button nose. Is he dreaming? What kind of good fortune is he being blessed with today, and does it come with strings attached?

“So another one of those?” she asks, and rings them up.

They sidle along the counter to wait for their drinks, and Carver’s phone buzzes in his pocket. Predictably, it’s Bethy. _Why didn’t you tell me you had a date today?? I’m so offended????_

 _it was an accident_ , he types back before putting his phone on silent and putting it away. “Sorry. Nosy sisters.”

“You have siblings?” Felix seems inordinately delighted by this news, so Carver ends up talking about Bethy and her skyrocketing publishing career, and Garrett with his two husbands and rescue kennel. Felix is fascinated by everything he says, which is a tremendous boost to his ego, and he finds himself standing close and letting their arms brush as they chat. When their drinks come, they move from Carver’s round table to a smaller corner bench in a patch of sunlight, and Felix talks about how he knows Dorian—their supposed mutual acquaintance, though Carver has never heard his name—and a little about his students, though he seems reticent to discuss his actual work.

“You don’t have to lie to me,” Carver says eventually, mouth twitching with poorly suppressed amusement. “You can just say you work for the government and leave it at that.”

“I don’t work for the government!” Felix laughs. “I promise. It’s just, my work is kind of esoteric, and it’s hard to get into too much detail without being confusing. Unless you’re actually an expert in imaginary numbers and theoretical mathematics, there’s only so much I can talk about until it gets boring.”

“I’m not either of those things, but I don’t mind. I like listening to you talk.”

Felix ducks his head and turns a pretty shade of pink, and Carver lets his hand drop to his own knee, sliding until his pinky finger meets the fabric of Felix’s close-fitting sand-colored trousers. Felix presses back, thigh to thigh; holding his breath, Carver moves his hand to Felix’s knee. Felix smiles at the ground and doesn’t answer.

“Or we can talk about something else,” Carver adds quietly. He’s almost forgotten that this was all a case of mistaken identity—instead it’s just serendipity, an unexpected clashing of worlds born of luck and chance. Felix’s thigh is firm and warm under his hand, and when he rubs his thumb along the outer seam of his trousers, he edges a little closer on the bench.

“What would you like to talk about?” Felix asks. He laces his fingers together in his lap and Carver tries not to leer.

“If you teach at Min U, what brings you to the Marches?”

“The cities here have some wonderful libraries. Kirkwall in particular has some of the oldest written works on the foundations of mathematics, and it’s doubly impressive since so many were almost lost in the wars.” His voice hitches and then falls back into its comfortable northern cadence as Carver slides his hand up another half-inch. Felix stretches out his opposite leg, opening up his pelvis, and even with the prim fold of his hands over his crotch, Carver can see his touch is affecting him. “And, you know, the traveling bit is nice. The university is funding everything, so I have a lot of freedom to go where the research is most promising.”

“Orlais is supposed to have some of the finest libraries in the world.”

“If you want music and literature and art, yes. Which are all wonderful things,” he hastens to add, obviously thinking of Carver’s poetry. “I love that aspect of culture, too. But my superiors won’t be quite as impressed if I send back receipts from the Louvre in Val Royeaux instead of the Kirkwall Museum of Alchemical Research.”

“We have culture here too, you know. Hightown has plenty of galleries and markets—a lot of it is newer, I grant you, but it’s still worth looking at.”

“You sound like you know where all the good spots are,” Felix says archly, eyes gleaming with interest. He shifts in his seat, and Carver’s hand slips a little higher along his inner thigh. Maker preserve him, what is his life? The table masks everything from an outside perspective, but from his own it’s hard to ignore the fact that he’s practically groping a stranger’s goods in public.

“I know a thing or two,” Carver agrees. He’s not quite sure what they’re talking about anymore. “I could show you, if you wanted.”

“I’d like that.” Felix’s eyes are definitely pinned to his lips now. Carver resists the urge to lick them.

Like an air raid siren on a balmy summer day, Felix’s phone goes off in his pocket. He jumps, blushing to his hairline with apologies, but Carver just squeeze his knee in commiseration and withdraws to let him fish it out. He lifts it to his ear with a sigh. “Dorian, what on earth—”

He’s immediately cut off by a fiery tirade that Carver can’t quite make out from here. A few words filter in, though: _blighted idiot, outraged, my deepest apologies_. Carver’s sizzling good mood drains away in an instant. Of course. The _real_ date Felix was supposed to meet realized what happened and is furious at being stood up. He curls his hand into a fist against his knee, still feeling the firmness of Felix’s thigh like a ghost in his palm, and looks away.

“What are you talking about?” Felix bursts out. “He’s right—”

More expletives. Carver can practically feel Felix’s gaze on him like a physical touch, prickling his skin like needles. The daydream is over.

“I see,” Felix says eventually, voice even. “Well, give him my regards. And thanks for trying.” He hangs up and drops his phone into a jacket pocket. For a while, there’s silence. Then Felix clears his throat. “So. You’re not the bloke I was supposed to meet.”

“Er. No.”

“And you knew that. But you just went along with it because… why? As a joke? For a laugh at a stranger’s expense?”

“No!” Carver exclaims, so outraged he manages to meet his eyes. “It was just so—so unexpected and so unreal that at first I didn’t think it was actually happening. And by the time I realized what was going on, I… well, you’re… you’re sort of wonderful. Smart, and good-looking, and Maker knows why but you actually laugh at my jokes, so your sense of humor must be as shite as mine.” He shrugs, clasping his hands together between his knees and watching the slow, embarrassed scrape of his shoe against the pavement. “I like you. And I kind of forgot that this wasn’t… real.”

For a while there’s just silence. Then a sigh. “Well, considering the man I was _supposed_ to meet stood me up… you’re already looking a lot better.”

“He stood you up?” Carver demands, instantly offended on his behalf, but Felix holds up his his hands to ward him off.

“Easy, I just had the whole angry friend rant from Dorian. Yeah, he stood me up. So the only other alternative for today would have been for me to sit alone for…” He checks his watch. “Forty-five minutes before Dorian realized and called me. I have to say, this was much more preferable.” He knocks their knees together, and Carver smiles despite himself.

“I’m sorry I lied to you.”

“It’s all right. You didn’t mean any harm.” Felix smiles back. “But it’s not really fair, is it? You co-opting someone else’s date?”

“Are you asking me to try harder?”

Felix shrugs. “Well, we _were_ just talking about art galleries.”

Carver looks at his own watch. “What are you doing in, oh, about ten minutes?”

“I didn’t have anything planned,” Felix says innocently. “Why?”

“Would you like to go on a date with me?”

He grins. “I’d love to.”

 

* * *

 

"I knew the artist.”

Felix lowers himself to stone bench in the middle of the gallery, an old stone building that used to be part of the Gallows—once called a school, then revealed as a prison, a camp to keep mages away from the outside world. Now it is a memorial, a museum left largely intact as it had been, with this entry hall turned into a gallery displaying the work of renegades and rebels who had fostered the uprising from under Kirkwall’s streets. Before them is the crown jewel, a massive block of cement transported from its home in the sewer slums to be put on display for everyone to see: the beginning of a revolution.

“Knew?” he asks quietly, settling in at Carver’s side.

“He was killed in the conflicts. His name was Feynriel.” Carver’s eyes trace the work, done in spray paint and charcoal, blackened at the corners from the fires that raged after the chantry explosion. “He was the first casualty, but not the last. They took him from his mother in the slums and decided he was too dangerous to live, so he escaped. And made this. He was killed in the street and they branded his chest with lyrium afterward, as a warning. But it was too late—the fire had already been kindled.”

“You were here for it, then. For the wars.”

Carver nods. “I was a Templar recruit when it all began, but by the time the riots started I had abandoned my post and went to fight in the streets. Templars were supposed to protect people, but they didn’t. They only protected themselves.” He looks at his hands, at the scars that still litter his palms and his arms from digging innocents out of the rubble, and gives a self-deprecating laugh that seems to echo off the high ceiling like mockery. The nearest docent makes a warning face at him, which he ignores. “Sorry. Not very uplifting topic for a first date, is it?”

“I don’t mind.” He sounds like he means it. He reaches out, and when Carver accepts, Felix takes one of his hands and holds it in his lap, thumb following the ugly pink X on the back that marks him for a mage sympathizer. “Is that what your poetry is about?”

“Some of it. And my childhood. We grew up in Ferelden,” he explains at Felix’s questioning noise.

“That explains the accent.”

“Ha. Yeah.” He uncurls his fingers and Felix laces their hands together. He doesn’t know why, but he is comfortable like this, sitting close with their knees together and their hands intertwined as if they’ve been dating for ages instead of hours. “What is it like?” he asks, prompted by this ease. “Living in Tevinter, where mages are revered instead of hated?”

“It’s… different. I’m not really sure how to describe it to you. I am _altus_ —which means I’m a mage from a good family—but I was never any good at magic. It’s why I prefer to travel. Be out from under my father’s shadow.”

Carver is a little bit shocked by this. “You’re a mage?”

“Yes. A terrible one.” He laughs. “I don’t mind it anymore, I prefer my numbers, but it used to be the bane of my life. I thought I was going to ruin my family’s reputation. But,” he shrugs, “it turned out to not be such a terrible thing. My parents have taken on a few apprentices that they will sponsor into the Magisterium, and I am free to pursue what I wish. Career, friends, relationships… it’s quite freeing, actually.”

“That’s good.”

“Mm.”

“It reminds me of—well, never mind,” he says, cutting himself off at the pass. Felix stirs, turning to look at him.

“It reminds you of what? Tell me.”

“It reminds me of a line from one of my poems. I was writing about Feynriel, actually, about something he said once that just sort of stuck with me. _My heart is not a clock_.”

Felix smiles, charmed and bemused. “Explain it to me?”

“It’s like… well, it’s like love, or anything we’re passionate about. Anything we need to thrive, not just survive. Love isn’t something we can wind up and set, or control. Love is… like art,” he says, latching onto the metaphor with his heart in his throat and the weight of Felix’s regard warming his face. “A force that comes into our lives without rules, without limits or expectations. And every time I hear that line I am reminded that love, like art, must always be free.”

Felix draws a deep breath. “That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. No, truly. I—I have to admit, when you said you were a poet I was sort of… I was skeptical.”

“Why?” Carver laughs, even though he already knows the answer.

“Well, you’re… you’re laughing at me,” Felix says with a frown. “You’re so _big_ , you look like you spend all your free time at the gym or possibly wrestling cattle, not…”

“Writing like a little pansy?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” He leans their shoulders together for a moment, until the wrinkle in between Felix’s eyebrows smooths away. “Honestly I was never much of a writer, but it turns out being hospitalized and going through months and months of physical therapy leaves you with a lot of time on your hands.”

“You were hospitalized?”

“Toward the end, yeah. Missed the bloody announcement and everything, slept right through it. I woke up and the war was over, a bit disorienting.” He detangles their fingers and leans down to pull up his right trouser cuff, exposing the metal joint of his prosthetic ankle, illuminated faintly by the lyrium cells that power it. “I kept my knee, but everything else had to go.”

Felix’s mouth is a perfectly round O when he sits up again, trouser back in place. “I didn’t realize.”

“Neither do I, most days. It’s amazing what magic can do when you stop being afraid of it and work _with_ it instead of against it.” He clears his throat. “You’re not put off by it, are you?”

“What? No, of course not, I was just… caught off guard. I’m sorry if I was rude.”

“You weren’t,” Carver assures him. “I just like shocking people whenever possible.”

“Berk.”

He giggles, and the docent clears his throat from where he lurks in the corner. “Ugh. I think we’re being _disruptive._ ”

“Perhaps we should keep moving? Be disruptive somewhere else?”

Carver takes a second look at the wicked gleam in his eyes and stands, letting himself wince just a little at the stiffness in his leg. “That sounds fantastic. Lead on.”

//

“I think— _oh fucking Maker_ —I think this counts as disruptive.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, we’re the only ones in here.” He pushes up the hem of Felix’s shirt and kisses the newly-exposed skin, sucking on a nipple until it’s as cherry-red as his much-abused mouth. Fingers tangle in his hair and hot breath puffs against his forehead as he works his way down, massaging the stiff bulge that hides behind Felix’s fly.

Felix drops his head back against the bathroom stall and groans. “Carv—hang on, your leg—”

“It’s fine. Might need a hand getting up again, but this is fine.” He nuzzles his open mouth over the shape of his prick, grinning when he feels his thighs quiver under his hands. “Wanna get yourself out for me, sweet thing?”

Felix draws a shuddering breath and nods, chin tipped to his chest as he unzips his fly and pushes down the waistband of his boxer briefs. Carver’s mouth waters. He kisses the underside first, gently, and when Felix whimpers he sucks the head into his mouth. The taste and texture are exquisite— _Maker_ , it’s  been so long since he was intimate with anyone, and he’s desperate, gagging for it, swallowing around the head until he chokes and has to take a breather.

“Fuck, you’re delicious,” he rasps against his hipbone, and he leaves a livid mark there as evidence when he goes down on him again.

Felix comes a minute or two later, muffling his screams into the crook of his arm where his jacket is bunched up. Carver swallows and licks him clean after, and then rests his head against his belly and breathes through his own tumultuous arousal, trying to get a grip. Having sex with men he’s just met isn’t his usual modus operandi, but sweet Andraste on her pyre if it wasn’t the best sex he’s ever had. Not just because Felix is gorgeous, and witty, and thoughtful, but because this strange meeting is turning into something more than just serendipity, more than just a quick fuck in the bathroom of a museum. There’s a spark of something almost holy in Felix, something he’s desperate to attain, and every kiss and touch they share feels like one step closer to the Golden City.

“You’re beautiful,” Felix murmurs when he finally struggles back upright, helping him get his feet under him without comment. “Maker’s mercy, you gorgeous man, come here.”

And because Carver is weak, he succumbs. He lets Felix pump his cock while they kiss lazily, breathing harshly through their noses while their tongues press deep into each other’s mouths, and when he gets close Felix holds a wad of toilet paper to his dick and giggles when he cums into it before flushing it down the toilet.

“That was the most unromantic sex I’ve ever had,” he bemoans into Felix’s neck. “And yet it was so, so good.”

“I guess we’ll just have to try again then, hmm?” He pets the sweat-damp hair off Carver’s forehead and kisses his temple, apparently enjoying the weight and heat of his body pressing him into the stall door. “If you’re that good at sucking cock I can’t wait to find out what else you can do.”

“Dirty bugger,” Carver tells him, and then the bathroom door swings open. They freeze, waiting for the other person to enter the stall beside them—then, with a mirrored look of dismay, they leave their stall in a rush and wash their hands perfunctorily before escaping, muffling their giggles in the deserted corridor.

“I’ve got a really nice hotel room,” Felix says as they walk hand in hand through the rest of the museum. “If, you know. You wanted to visit, ever.”

“Tonight?” Carver suggests, hoping he’s not being too forward. _Maker, you had his cock in your mouth five minutes ago, I don’t think anything could be considered ‘too forward’ now._

“Please. As much as I enjoyed _that_ ,” and he cocks his head back the way they came, “it might be kinder to both of us to do it on a bed.”

They leave the museum a short time later and Carver stands a moment on the steps, letting the crisp late-summer sun envelop him. Felix waits while he takes in the view, hangs still entwined. “Does this feel sort of… preordained?” Carver asks eventually, turning to look at him. The sun slants through the grey-green of his eyes and turns them gold, illuminating them from behind like a thread of lyrium woven into his irises. “Meeting like this?”

“Maybe a little,” Felix allows. “But let’s not jinx it.”

Carver nods, and accepts the kiss he bestows upon him like a boon. If it was meant to be, the Maker will see it done.

* * *

 

Carver often travels a lot for his own work, to this library and that particularly inspiring vista to feed the muse and keep it happy, but for the next month or two he’s holed up in Kirkwall writing up a storm. It’s the perfect timing to have a bit of a late-summer affair. It’s always hovering in the back of their minds that it’s temporary—but like their meeting, Carver leans on karma and serendipity, pushing aside his doubts and the impending date of Felix’s departure and just enjoying his presence as much as he can.

As promised, he takes him on a tour of Kirkwall’s arts district, walking along the boulevards of the Old City and strolling up and down the dyke wall that faces the harbor. They spend their days apart, mostly, working on their own projects, but in the afternoons they meet for coffee or dinner or drinks, and return to Carver’s apartment or Felix’s hotel room and spend their nights like they’re living in a whirlwind romance novel.

Perhaps they are.

But now, abruptly, it has come to a stone-cold end. Felix checked out of his hotel a day early and brought his things to Carver’s apartment in order to catch his early flight back to Tevinter the next morning, and they spent the evening making love, with occasional breaks for wine and munchies. They dropped off sometime around midnight, and now Carver is the first awake, lying angled across the bed with Felix sprawled in his arms, sour breath puffing slow against his neck. He stares at the ceiling instead of the clock. The weight of his body is nothing compared to the weight on his heart, but he knows he has no leverage, nothing he can say that will make Felix want to stay. Everything he has is in Tevinter—his friends, his family, his job, his _life_ —and what is Carver against all that? A willing body, someone to take him out and about and treat him like a prince, but for a limited time only. He comes with an expiration date, and he knows it. Has always known it.

There had been no declarations of love, and there won’t be. They’re both adults, and they know the score. They live hours apart by plane, days by car, and even if a long-distance relationship were possible, they’ve said nothing about commitment, or _making plans_. There is no future for them; just this. Just a cold autumn morning with the windows left open over the bay, letting in the sound of waves and the smell of salt and a sad, grey sky.

In his arms, Felix stirs. Carver tightens his grip just a little and breathes him in one more time, nose to his hairline. “Time is it?” Felix mumbles without looking up.

“Almost six.” His alarm isn’t set to go off for another half-hour. Hopefully, he rubs Felix’s back under the covers, coaxing him closer. “You’ve got time.”

“Time for a shower and a proper breakfast at the airport,” Felix says, pleased. He wriggles free of Carver’s body and climbs out of bed, stretching his hands to the ceiling. He’s still naked from the night before, and every curve and muscle is thrown into sharp relief against the silver grey light coming through the window. Carver’s eyes wander down his back, following the trail of red marks he’d left behind last night. He wonders if he’s still sore, if he’ll feel the pounding Carver gave him every time he sits down today. “Maker, it’s cold in here,” Felix says suddenly. He goes to the window and shuts it firmly, and when he turns back his nipples are peaked and his cock is plump and rosy against his thigh.

“Gorgeous,” Carver murmurs without quite meaning to.

Felix smirks. “Are you trying to get me back into bed, serrah?”

“Is it working?”

“Mmmm.” He saunters closer, close enough that his thigh brushes Carver’s hand where it hangs off the bed, an aborted reach. “Maybe. I really don’t want to be late.”

“You won’t be.” Carver hooks his hand around the back of his thigh, coaxing him nearer. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Oh really?” Felix laughs, but he climbs into bed.

Through some odd twist, they don’t speak again the rest of the morning. Carver sucks his cock lying down like it’s going out of style, and Felix straddles his shoulders and bites his hand against the noises that rise in his throat, the only accompaniment the slight creak of the mattress as he fucks his mouth. Afterward they shower together and Felix returns the favor, silent under the patter of water against the tile floor. By the time they’ve dressed and Carver is loading up his bags into the trunk of his car to take him to the airport, the silence has become noticeable. Painfully so. Felix’s good humor has drained away and he sits primly in the passenger seat with his hands folded in his lap, face like stone as he looks out the window; Carver doesn’t bother to turn on the radio, and drives like he’s in a fog, feeling the muted grey of the day weighing down on him like a physical ache.

Felix says nothing when he follows him through customs, and they order coffee and breakfast sandwiches at a kiosk independently of one another. It’s almost like a dream, Carver thinks. A vision. Like speaking will break the spell, and Felix will be gone from his life entirely, never to be seen again. But, he supposes, it’s sort of like that anyway.

“You don’t have to stay,” Felix says at last, standing at the gate while the minutes tick down to boarding time. He’s got half an hour still, after all that, and Carver is frozen.

“All right.” He doesn’t know what else to say—he doesn’t have it in him to beg. Not here. Not for this. He was lucky to get as much as he did, and he knows it. He leans in and kisses Felix’s cheek, and it feels cold and impersonal somehow, but he doesn’t know how to fix it. “Have a good flight.”

And that’s all. He turns around and walks back the way he came, and he doesn’t know why it feels like every step is splitting him in two.

He gets as far as rounding the corner when he has to sit down. He feels dizzy, somehow, like his blood sugar levels have dropped, but that doesn’t make sense because he just ate. He breathes through it, pulling out his phone. The last text is from Felix, from the night before. _I can’t wait_. Carver had offered to host him for the night, promising food and sex and a comfortable bed. The magic words. And yet not enough to make him stay.

It hits him suddenly that that’s what he wants. He wants Felix to stay. Or to follow him, perhaps, run after him and confess his heart—and it’s foolish, isn’t it, to declare his love after such a short time together? But the hand of fate has been in this from the beginning, and with a queasy roll of his stomach, he realizes he’d being a complete idiot.

He stands up too quickly and nearly falls over. Definitely not the kind of impression he wants to make, even if falling at someone’s feet sounds good in the stories. There’s a smoothie bar down a few stalls, and he makes his way there, ordering the first thing on the list and sucking it down in record time. The girl behind the counter eyes him with something like alarm, and he gives her his nicest, most normal smile before binning the cup and walking back to the gate.

But Felix is gone—half the people waiting are gone. First class has already boarded, and they’re halfway through business class. All the built-up excitement leaves him in a rush, leaving him jittery and hollow. _So much for your grand plans_ , he thinks glumly. He bites back the disappointment and turns to go. And stops.

Standing a few feet away, his carryon bag sitting on the floor, is Felix. He wrings his hands, eyes dark and wet, and opens his mouth as Carver approaches him, tentative, certain that he’s nothing more than an apparition. “Come with me,” he blurts, just as Carver tells him, “Stay.”

They fall silent in tandem and stare at one another. “Or,” Carver fumbles, “I could do that, too. But… your flight.”

Felix shrugs. “I missed it.”

“Your luggage?”

“Lost. A pity, I suppose I’ll have to borrow yours. Or just go without.” He comes a step closer, close enough that their toes brush and Carver can feel the heat of his body pouring off him like a furnace. “I have another semester to work, but I don’t need to spend all of it at the university. One more month.” He puts his hands on Carver’s chest, and it only seems natural for Carver to put his arms around his waist and pull him close. “A month for you to get your things in order, for us to decide if this is what we really want. And then come with me to Tevinter. You’ll love it there—more art and culture than you can shake a stick at, _and_ we have the internet, so you can email your publisher from wherever you like.” He smiles, noses just touching. “Say yes.”

Carver’s belly swoops. “Maker, yes, of course,” but whatever else he means to say is cut off when Felix kisses him soundly in front of the entire airport. _I love you_ , he thinks, heart and arms full of him, but the confession, he decides, will keep.

 


End file.
